Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Aseem Trivedi’s arrest for his anti-establishment cartoons shocked and outraged India. Section 124 of the Indian Penal Code,
under which Trivedi was arrested, is reserved for anyone who “brings or
attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to
excite disaffection towards the government,” with disaffection meaning
“disloyalty and all feelings of enmity”. Although a majority of Indians
found the cartoons crude rather than clever, public opinion overwhelmingly believed the cartoonist was well within his rights to publish them.

Trivedi has since been released on bail, but the incident has triggered debates about future of India’s repressive sedition laws. Even the Mumbai High Court
lashed out against the police for arresting Trivedi in the first place,
stating: “We live in a free society and enjoy freedom of speech and
expression. Sedition is a pre-independence [law]…”

(Cartoon by Aseem Trivedi, from cartoonsagainstcorruption.blogspot.co.uk)

The complex political layering of India often tosses up headlines
where charges of sedition have been levied against persons who, by
official accounts, seem to be sympathetic to anti-national elements.
Take, for example, the case of Kashmir University lecturer Noor Muhammed
Bhat, who was arrested in December 2010 for asking his students to
translate the following lines from Urdu to English: “Kashmir is burning
again. The blood of youth is being spilled like water. Kids are being
beaten to death by police and forces…”. The paper was given to students
at a time when the Kashmir Valley was reeling from pro-independence
riots in the form of stone throwing from students, sometimes drawing police fire in return.

Bhat also asked students to write an essay on the topic “Are stone
throwers the real heroes?”. Bhat defended his actions, saying he was
merely drawing from newspapers, and posing a question which students
were free to answer as they liked. However, the High Court termed his
paper “seditious and rebellious in character.” Bhat was ultimately granted bail and released in January 2011, but not before he was barred from setting or evaluating exam papers for the next five years.

Contrast that with a case in south India this year. About 8,000
people, including children, have been charged under IPC Section 124 for
protesting against the planned construction of a nuclear power plant in
the fishing village of Idinthakari, Tamil Nadu. Their crime? As a sign
of protest, on Independence Day this year, the villagers refused to hoist the national flag, and put up black flags instead.

For the hundreds of academics, teachers, journalists, artists and
ordinary citizens who have been charged for sedition on the most dubious
grounds, Aseem Trivedi’s predicament might, in the long run, be the
turning point. Trivedi wasn’t protesting a particular project in a far
corner of the country, nor was he caught up in an extremely contentious
political hotbed like Kashmir. He was representing, visually, a
frustration with government, politics and corruption that has been best
captured by the India Against Corruption movement, of which he is a member. For Indians for whom corruption is today’s most important issue, it was easy to look at Trivedi’s cartoons
and decide for themselves if it was really a case of sedition or an
anti-establishment protest. There could have been no better trigger for
Indians to understand what “sedition” meant and grasp the import of
abuse of sedition law.

"Section 124 A… [is] designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.
Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no
affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest
expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate,
promote, or incite to violence."

With the media and public-spirited Indians calling for a comprehensive examination and even repeal of the law due to its blatant misuse, it
is worth restating that the right to free expression and peaceful
dissent is a must for any democracy (freedom of speech is guaranteed as a
fundamental right
by the Constitution of India, albeit with restrictions). Sedition is a
very serious charge that should never be levied against any individual
lightly. The situation becomes even more urgent with the internet fast becoming the urban Indian’s vehicle of choice to debate and disagree.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Indian government’s proposal
to the United Nations General Assembly, to form a 50-member United
Nations Committee on Internet Related Policies (CIRP) to “regulate” the
internet has been met with controversy since it was tabled last October.
On 19 September, one of India’s leading industry bodies, the Federation
of Indian Chambers and Commerce Industry, FICCI,
held a panel discussion bringing together government, business groups
and civil society for the first time to debate the proposal.

Currently, a US-based nonprofit called the Internet Cooperation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates Internet domain names and
IP addresses; with a sophisticated system of councils set up to address
the concerns of various stakeholders (corporations, governments,
Internet user groups, etc.) across the world.

Although the US government has no direct role in ICANN’s decision
making process, many other governments have been increasingly
uncomfortable with its seeming proximity to Washington. At the same
time, governments have increasingly found that they need to rely on
internet intermediaries (such as social networking sites) in order to
censor content, and are looking for more direct control over these
issues. The Indian press has questioned the government’s motives for the
proposal, as it can be seen as taking internet governance away from
multistakeholderism and the ICANN — and moving it more towards a
bureaucratic, government-led UN committee.

Speaking on behalf of the government, Ambassador A Gopinath made a
spirited case for the document at the panel discussion, emphasising that
the CIRP is part of an effort to fill a need for “enhanced
cooperation”, building on the political consensus achieved by the 2005
Tunis Agenda — the resulting document from the World Summit for
Information Societies (WSIS), which was a series of discussions around
bridging the digital divide. Even though Gopinath stressed that the CIRP
would be transparent and multilateral, he was almost entirely drowned
out by business voices as well as civil society members outraged by the
government’s decision to present the proposal to the UN without
consulting with them.

“CIRP seems like a solution in search of a problem,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an Independent Member of Parliament.

Industry expert Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO of the Data Security Council of India,
stressed that while governments may choose to focus on trademark and
intellectual property issues, civil society is concerned with civil
liberties regarding the Internet.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, president of the Foundation for Media Professionals, pointed out that the fear that governments seek to subtly control what people read and watch is real.

Panelists and members of the audience also raised concerns about
authoritarian governments using the 50-member CIRP to seriously limit
freedom of expression. The consensus was that the Indian government had
failed on two accounts: consulting industry and civil society groups
before drafting the CIPR, and later, in adequately explaining why this
was not done.

As the way forward, many speakers suggested that the Indian
government either withdraw the proposal or seek to revise it after
holding further discussions with the public. As Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society
said, “the proposal would have won more friends if it was clearer about
if it wants to regulate, and whom it wants to regulate.”

The government assertion that CIRP would be a “quick-footed and
timely” decision-making body was laughed at because it would — by its
own suggestion — meet for only two weeks in the year. Behind the scenes,
sources suggest that the Indian government’s enthusiasm for pushing
this proposal has waned, even at the highest levels. Perhaps this forum,
which FICCI admitted was encouraged by the Minister for Communications
and Information Technology, is a first step to revise this position.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Across the world, debates around freedom of expression have
intensified, in part due to people’s increased participation because of
the many avenues communication available today. Confidence seems to
follow connectivity. But think of the people who remain disconnected —
excluded from national and international discourse — because of the lack
of wires and signals. As tempting it is to believe that the whole world
is connected, the truth is very different, especially in developing
countries such as India. The numbers speak for themselves.

According to the latest figures
released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the total
telephone subscriber base in the country stands at 965.52 million. This
looks encouraging for a population of roughly 1.2 billion, until one
considers the urban-rural divide hidden by these numbers. The overall
teledensity in urban areas is an impressive 169.03 per cent compared to
40.66 per cent in rural areas. The majority of Indians, 68.84 per cent, live in rural areas. For a country that wants to reach 100 per cent rural teledensity by 2020 — this ambitious target includes extremely remote areas — India has a long way to go.

The Indian telecoms industry has been viewed as a success story
because of the rapid proliferation of mobile phones, largely through
private enterprise. But the future impact of the now infamous scandal,
caused by collusion between government and big business, on further
corporate investment is yet to be determined. The experience highlights
the fact that in order to ensure universal access, the government cannot
depend on the market alone. In fact, the government needs to review its
track record and policies that guide connectivity, especially last-mile
connectivity in India.
Indian telecoms have been tarnished by controversy at the highest
levels with senior politicians, bureaucrats and corporate executives
fighting charges of corruption in court. The former Minister of
Communications and Information Technology, A Raja, has been accused of
favouring corporate telecom players by selling bandwidth at undervalued
prices and by rigging the allocation process. The Indian media has
closely documented the scandal.
Ironically, the undervalued bandwidth spectrum led to stiff competition
among mobile operators and lower prices for the end users. However,
the damage to the end users has been limited – as MP Rajeev
Chandrasekhar puts it, these scams are seen as victimless crimes. as the
impact is a loss to the exchequer, but not to service.

TheUniversal Service Obligation Fund, created by the
government of India in 2002 to “provide access to telecom services to
people in rural and remote areas of India at affordable and reasonable
prices”, has not come close to achieving its objectives. USOF’s mandate
was increased in 2006 to include mobile telephony and broadband. The
idea was to encourage private players to roll out services in rural
areas by incentivising it. Telecom companies are required to contribute
five per cent of their adjusted gross revenue towards the fund. Their
function of providing rural access is then to be subsidised by USOF. As
of March 2011, the fund had collected $7.44 Billion USD of which $2.69 Billion USD has been spent.

In 2011, the Indian media suggested that private service providers
who had bid aggressively to become USOF operators were now trying to
escape their license condition to roll out rural telephony. News reports
suggest that the reason was because they finding it commercially
unviable, and would prefer paying a less expensive penalty imposed by
the government for abandoning the project. The fact is that some of the
villages that need to be covered have very small populations — ranging
from 500 to 2000 people — making those geographies are very expensive to
connect. As a result, the government is planning to use the USOF to
roll out a National Optic Fibre Network to connect every panchayat
by 2014, to further facilitate e-governance initiatives. The hope is
that the government run Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) will
successfully complete what the private companies found unprofitable —
last mile connectivity.

The truth is that both the cases mentioned above, through government
and corporate action, have resulted in intangible and tangible loss to
the Indian public. By very rough calculations, it would appear that
about 498 million residents of rural India are still living in the dark
disconnected shadow of the digital era — an embarrassingly high number
for a country that has aspirations of becoming a global superpower. And
while the government’s National e-Government Plan promotes the idea of universal digital inclusion, actions on the ground need to mirror the ambition of policy documents.
Ultimately, the test of a healthy telecom sector should not depend only on its contribution
to the GDP (which, in India, is around three per cent ). It should also
be measured on the basis of the voice provided to every Indian,
unfettered by geography and bank balance. The cost of delaying rolling
out telecom services has resulted in widening the digital divide. Beyond
the cities, we need to think about the village that barely has a
landline connection, let alone a mobile phone.